Category Archives: Parties

My second wreath for the week is actually letters I made for my daughter’s baptism. This is seriously easy. I had this idea of doing my daughter’s initials to help jazz up a blank wall in our kitchen (where everyone stands when you host a party!). These are made of a pool noodle and some paper from the weekly ads! Check out the tutorial below and get to crafting.

1 pool noodle

paper

silver duct tape

1 roll silver flowery design duct tape

1 roll of pink design duct tape

scissors

scotch tape

coordinating flowers

a few inches of silver ribbon

I played with the noodle a bit to see about where I needed to cut. Mine was a D so I shaped the curved part of the D and then used a serrated knife to cut the noodle.

Shape the noodle and duct tape it together at the joints. You might need an extra set of hands to help hold the shape you need.

Wrap the letter with you favorite decorative duct tape. I chose a silver with a floral pattern.

Next I wanted to do the first and middle initial but smaller than the noodle. I had tons of weekly ads that I had collected for some project and now it was time to see what I could do with it. The L was really easy. I just rolled up several stacks of paper and put a little scotch tape on the edges to hold them together. The B took some shaping but it came together.

Then wrap with your choice of duct tape and attach at the joints to construct the letters you need. I will say the curved letters are a bit more difficult but just keep working with it until you get the shape you desire.

I was really happy with how the letters turned out but thought they really needed something else. So I clipped a few artificial flowers from the dollar store and poked them into the noodle. I added a few loops of silver ribbon I had in my stash and thought they looked even better.

Have fun with your wreaths! They don’t all have to be circular and formal.

I love wreaths but I feel like they are a staple for the holidays. I usually have one up for Christmas but that is about it so I decided to compose a whole week of wreaths for all kinds of occasions. My first inspiration is from Pinterest. You may have seen this patriotic wreath that has been all over Pinterest. I decided to do my own version of it since it’s Memorial Day and we were having people over to celebrate. Here is how it turned out.

So a confession, I rarely read directions. That means putting together toys, how to fix my blender, how to use any electronic, etc, I don’t read any of them. No difference here on a tutorial for a patriotic wreath. I saw the picture, scrolled down the directions and was off to Hobby Lobby. I really like this project because it doesn’t have to be perfect to turn out.

Now my wreath calls for more than double the felt and I decided to use blue felt with glitter on it along with a pool noodle as the wreath. Here are all the supplies I used:

4 sheets glitter blue felt (HL)

13 sheets red felt (HL)

13 sheets white felt (HL)

duct tape (junk draw)

1 pool noodle (Dollar Stor)

felt stars–pre-cut (JoAnn’s)

2 1/2 boxes size 20- 1 1/4 straight pins (Sew-ology, half off at HL)

scotch tape

22 gauge floral wire (JoAnn’s or any craft store you have a coupon for)

Rotary blade and mat (my craft room)

Wreath hanger (craft closet)

Connect the ends of the noodle and duct tape. May need an extra set of hands to help but sometimes my hubs rolls his eyes at my craft projects (I can even see him thinking “Is this really going to work?”) so I found cutting a couple strips of duct tape first helps. Make sure you tape the noodle up good because the duct tape can tend to slip and trust me after all the time you spend pinning all the 2.2 squares of felt you might go mad if this thing comes a part.

My wreath is 16 inches from top to bottom. Now you are ready to start cutting the massive amount of felt in 2×2 squares.

Since I couldn’t remember all the inspiration instructions I just started pinning my squares on. I folded on a diagonal and then again to form a triangle.

Obviously due to the massive amount of felt I used I pinned them really close together. Pin the entire blue section first which spanned about 6 inches and each red and white section was 3 inches respectively.

Pin away!

Luckily it’s a mindless task, because it does take awhile!

The wreath is almost complete!

Ok so we need some stars. I found some pre-cute red, white and blue stars in the dollar section of JoAnn’s. I snagged a couple of packs and just used 3 white stars. To make the stars 3D I wrapped the wire around two of my fingers and then pulled off and reshaped from an oval to more circular shape. I went back to see what the inspiration blogger used and it was a crayon but I like the no so perfect look and frankly no one can see the wire. I also just scotch tapped the wire to the back of each of the stars. Poke the wire into the noodle and you are done.

Now to hang on the door to welcome our guests! I just used a wreath hanger that I had in the closet.

Some photos from our party.

She had fun playing in the bucket and is even learning to stand up on her own!

I think a table settings really make a party something special. Since this week is the recap of the baptism I thought I would show you a bit of the tables and food. Now I had full intention of taking pictures of all my hard work but was so worried about getting the food out, perfectly of course, that I totally forgot. So thank goodness my step-dad captured a few shots.

I made the tiered platters and borrowed the tablecloths from my mom. I really like how flowery tablecloth looked under the tired platters with flowers.